Kat 


"-LJAMS 
[  'pi-LEGE  I 
Dj£UCATEf 

SOLD 


Cfje  iftemortal 


OF 


JOHN    HARVARD. 


October   15,   1884. 


MEMORIAL 


OF 


JOHN    HARVARD. 


THE    GIFT    TO 


Har\)arU  ©ntoemtp 


OF 


SAMUEL   JAMES    BRIDGE. 


Ceremomes  at  tije  (Hntoeflmg  of  tije  statue, 

October  15,  1884. 

WITH    AN    ADDRESS 
By    GEORGE     EDWARD     ELLIS. 


CAMBRIDGE: 

JOHN    WILSON    AND    SON. 

Santottsitg  |)rres. 

1884. 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIC 

SANTA  BARBARA 


THE    HARVARD    MEMORIAL. 


A  T  the  dinner  of  the  Alumni  of  Harvard  Univer- 
sity  on  Commencement  Day,  June  27,  1883,  Mr. 
Joseph   H.  Choate,  who  presided,  read  the  following 
letter :  — 

To  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College. 

Gentlemen,  —  I  have  the  pleasure  of  offering  you  an  ideal 
statue  in  bronze,  representing  your  founder,  the  Rev.  John  Har- 
vard, to  be  designed  by  Daniel  C.  French  of  Concord,  and  to  be 
placed  in  the  south  end  of  the  enclosure  in  which  Memorial  Hall 
stands.  If  you  do  me  the  honor  to  accept  this  offer,  I  propose  to 
contract  at  once  for  the  work,  including  an  appropriate  pedestal ; 
and  I  am  assured  that  the  same  can  be  in  place  by  June  1,  1884. 

I  am,  with  much  respect, 

Samuel  J.  Bridge. 

Mr.  Choate  had  referred  to  the  giver  as  "  a  pious 
worshipper  at  Harvard's  shrine,  turning  his  face  to- 
wards Mecca ; "  and,  when  the  letter  was  read,  the 
applause  of  the  company  compelled  Mr.  Bridge  to 
make  a  silent  acknowledgment.  Later  in  the  dinner, 
Dr.  Ellis,  referring  to  the  subject,  said,  — 

"  It  is  delightful  for  me  to  have  heard  for  the  first  time  this  day 
that  one  of  my  boys  [turning  to  Mr.  Bridge],  a  member  of  that 
Harvard  Society  in  Charlestown  [to  which  Dr.  Ellis  had  referred, 
and  of  which  he  had  been  the  minister],  is  to  give  the  college  a 


statue.  It  must  be  an  ideal  one  ;  but  our  ideals,  we  are  told,  are 
always  perfection,  and,  if  there  ever  ought  to  be  a  perfect  exposition 
of  a  good  and  lovable  man,  it  must  be  that  of  John  Harvard." 

There  were  some  necessary  delays  in  the  progress 
of  the  work;  but  the  statue  was  in  place  in  season 
for  the  ceremonies  of  unveiling,  which  was  fixed  for 
Oct.  15,  1884. 

At  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  of  that  day  there 
was  a  gathering  in  Sanders  Theatre.  Charles  Wil- 
liam Eliot,  the  President  of  the  University,  with 
Ebenezer  Rockwood  Hoar,  the  chairman  of  the 
Board  of  Overseers,  and  other  officers,  were  seated 
on  the  platform,  and  with  them  were  Mr.  Bridge  and 
Mr.  French,  and  those  who  were  to  take  part  in  the 
services.  The  main  floor,  and  other  seats  on  the 
platform,  were  occupied  by  the  undergraduates  and 
graduates.  The  first  gallery  held  the  invited  guests, 
while  the  second  gallery  was  thrown  open  to  the 
public. 

After  the  Harvard  Glee  Club  had  sung,  the  Rev. 
Edward  E.  Hale,  D.D.,  led  the  audience  in  prayer, 
and  then  all  joined  in  the  Lord's  Prayer.  The  Rev. 
George  E.  Ellis,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  then  delivered  the 
principal  address. 


ADDRESS. 

BY   THE   REV.   DR.   ELLIS. 

Mr.  President,  Officers,  Students,  and  Alumni  of  Harvard 
College  : 

*  I  ^HE  first  words  for  this  occasion  are  those  of  grateful  rec- 
ognition  of  the  generosity  which  to-day  presents  to  the 
college  a  personal  memorial  of  its  revered  founder.  The  giver 
of  this  statue  is  present  here  ;  but  his  modesty  is  the  substi- 
tute for  his  speech.  It  is  by  his  desire,  as  well  as  by  official 
invitation,  that  I  speak  for  him.  It  may  well  be  so,  as  our  ac- 
quaintance and  friendship  date  back  more  than  forty  years, 
in  his  membership  of  the  Harvard  Church  Society  in  Charles- 
town.  He  has  been  a  wide  wanderer,  a  traveller  in  all  lands, 
having  more  than  once  circled  the  globe.  As  a  confidential 
agent  of  our  government  for  many  years  on  the  Pacific  coast, 
he  faithfully  discharged  high  trusts.  He  has  liberally  en- 
dowed many  aids  to  education,  and  fostered  many  young 
men  in  their  school  and  college  course.  Holding  in  venerat- 
ing regard  his  descent  from  one  of  the  first  English  settlers  in 
this  place,  he  has  caused  a  representative  statue  of  him,  as  a 
Pilgrim,  to  be  planted  near  by  us,  on  the  Common,  a  gift  to 
the  city.  And  now  he  has  done  a  similar  loving  service  to 
the  college.  The  two  statues  commemorate  two  worthies  of 
our  earliest  years,  who  doubtless  met  on  this  virgin  soil,  and 
who,  we  can  imagine,  may  now  exchange  from  their  metal 
enshroudings  some  grave  recognitions. 


The  oldest  extant  document  which  in  type  clearly 
recognizes  the  existence  of  Harvard  College  is  a  precious 
pamphlet  with  this  title,  "New  England's  First-Fruits  in 
respect  to  the  Progress  of  Learning  in  the  College  at  Cam- 
bridge, in  Massachusetts  Bay,"  etc.  It  is  a  letter  dated 
"  Boston,  Sept.  26,  1642."  It  was  published  in  London  in 
1643,  the  year  following  the  graduation  of  our  first  class  of  nine 
members.  The  letter  gives  a  graphic  and  vigorous  account  of 
the  first  Commencement.  This  subject  has  the  chief  place 
in  the  pamphlet,  the  larger  remainder  being  devoted  to  a  most 
cheerful  and  hopeful  account  of  the  experience  and  prospects 
of  the  band  of  English  exiles  amid  the  stumps  of  their  clear- 
ing in  the  primeval  wilderness. 

The  writer  says,  that  as  soon  as  they  had  builded  their 
houses,  and  provided  for  necessary  food,  for  God's  worship, 
and  for  civil  government,  "the  next  thing  we  longed  for 
and  looked  after  was  to  advance  learning  and  to  perpetuate 
it  to  posterity,  dreading  to  leave  an  illiterate  ministry  to  the 
churches,  when  our  present  ministers  shall  lie  in  the  dust. 
And,  as  we  were  thinking  and  consulting  how  to  effect  this 
great  work,  it  pleased  God  to  stir  up  the  heart  of  one  Mr. 
Harvard  (a  godly  gentleman  and  a  lover  of  learning,  then 
living  amongst  us)  to  give  the  one-half  of  his  estate  (it  being 
in  all  about  .£1,700)  towards  the  erecting  of  a  Colledge,  and 
all  his  library.  After  him,  another  gave  .£300;  others  after 
them  cast  in  more ;  and  the  public  hand  of  the  State  added 
the  rest.  The  Colledge  was  by  common  consent  appointed  to 
be  at  Cambridge  (a  place  very  pleasant  and  accommodate), 
and  is  called  (according  to  the  name  of  the  first  founder) 
Harvard  College."  Then  follows  an  account  of  an  edifice, 
"  very  fair  and  comely  within  and  without,"  with  its  spacious 
hall,  for  daily  commons,  lectures,  and  exercises,  chambers, 
studies,  etc.,  for  students,  a  large  library  "  with  some  books 
to  it,  the  gifts  of  divers  of  our  friends,"  and  close  by  a 
grammar-school,  under  Master  Corlet,  "for  preparing  young 


scholars  for  Academical  learning."  The  subjects  of  study, 
disputation,  and  declamation,  are  such  as  would  try  the  wits, 
not  only  of  the  class  just  entered  here,  but  of  the  matured 
seniors,  who  are  already  looking  onward  to  the  glories  of 
class  day  through  the  grim  perspective  of  the  grind  for  the 
final  examination. 

From  that  frank,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  never  chal- 
lenged account  of  1642,  it  would  appear  that  John  Harvard, 
and  not  the  Colony  treasury,  gave  birth  and  being  to  this 
venerable  seat  of  learning.  In  will  and  purpose,  however, 
if  not  in  deed,  the  Colony  had  the  start.  In  the  General 
Court,  under  date  Oct.  28,  1636,  it  was  "  agreed  to  give  X400 
towards  a  schoale  or  colledge,"  —  X200  the  next  year,  and 
.£200  when  the  work  was  finished  ;  the  next  Court  to  designate 
the  place,  and  to  provide  for  the  building.  On  Nov.  15,  1637, 
the  Court  ordered  that  the  college  should  be  at  the  New 
Towne,  up  Charles  River,  and  a  few  days  later  a  committee  of 
twelve  of  the  most  honored  among  them  was  appointed  to  take 
order  for  it.  In  May,  1638,  the  name  Cambridge  was  substi- 
tuted for  New  Towne.  On  the  13th  of  March,  1639,  N.S., 
after  Harvard's  death,  it  was  ordered  "that  the  colledge  agreed 
upon  formerly  to  bee  built  at  Cambridg  shalbee  called  Har- 
vard Colledge."  That  name  rightfully  assigns  an  enviable 
and  deserved  honor  to  John  Harvard. 

And  who  was  John  Harvard  ?  Would  that  we  could  answer, 
if  only  in  such  information  as  is  generally  given  on  the  grave- 
stones of  the  worthy  and  the  honored  !  His  lineage  and  par- 
entage, his  birthplace  and  birthday,  the  dates  of  his  leaving 
the  Old  World  and  of  his  arrival  in  the  New,  are  to  this  time 
unknown  to  us.  An  earnest  investigator  has  within  this  year 
come  upon  a  clew  which  promises  to  relieve  the  mystery  of 
his  personal  history.  The  few  facts  assured  to  us  on  record 
concerning  him  are  the  following. 

Some  of  us  have  seen  on  the  register  of  Emmanuel  Col- 
lege, at  the  English  Cambridge,  his  signature  for  his  bache- 


8 

lor's  degree  in  163 1,  and  that  for  his  master's  degree  in  1635. 
His  rank  as  "pensioner"  indicates  independent  circumstances, 
as,  indeed,  does  the  largeness  of  his  gifts  to  the  college,  which 
would  now  represent  a  value  of  nearly  thirty  thousand  dollars. 
He  is  described  as  of  "  Middlesex."  His  contemporaries  here 
gave  him  the  title  of  reverend,  and  he  is  called  "sometimes 
minister  of  God's  word."  Whether  he  had  received  ordina- 
tion in  England  by  a  bishop,  or  by  his  Puritan  brethren,  we 
do  not  know,  as,  indeed,  we  know  nothing  concerning  him, 
from  his  receiving  his  second  degree  till  his  admission  as 
an  inhabitant  of  Charlestown  in  this  Colony,  Aug.  1,  1637. 
With  Ann,  his  wife,  he  became  a  member  of  the  church, 
which  gave  him  the  full  rights  of  citizenship,  Nov.  1,  1637. 
He  received  grants  of  land  from  the  town,  and  was  a  member 
of  a  committee  on  "providing  some  laws."  He  had  built  a 
comfortable  dwelling,  the  site  of  which  is  known  in  Charles- 
town.  It  was  occupied  by  the  minister  of  the  town  after 
his  death.  Chief  Justice  Sewall  tells  us  of  his  enjoying  its 
hospitality  on  the  night  of  Jan.  26,  in  1697,  and  of  the  pious 
and  grateful  memory  of  John  Harvard,  which  came  to  him  in 
his  chamber.  "  Jan'y  26,  1697,  I  lodged  at  Charlestown,  at 
Mrs.  Shepards,  who  tells  me  Mr.  Harvard  built  that  house. 
I  lay  in  the  chamber  next  the  street.  As  I  lay  awake  past 
midnight,  in  my  Meditation,  I  was  affected  to  consider  how 
long  agoe  God  had  made  provision  for  my  comfortable  Lodg- 
ing that  night ;  seeing  that  was  Mr.  Harvards  house.  And 
that  led  me  to  think  of  Heaven,  the  House  not  made  with 
hands,  which  God  for  many  Thousands  of  years  has  been 
storing  with  the  richest  furniture  (saints  that  are  from  time 
to  time  placed  there),  and  that  I  had  some  hopes  of  being 
entertain'd  in  that  Magnificent,  Convenient  Palace,  every 
way  fitted  and  furnished.  These  thoughts  were  very  re- 
freshing to  me."  If  the  dwelling  was  still  standing,  it  was 
burned  in  the  conflagration  of  Charlestown,  in  the  battle  of 
June  17. 


We  have  seen  that  the  project  of  a  college  was  in  earnest 
debate  at  the  date  of  Harvard's  appearance  in  the  country. 
It  engrossed  the  anxiety  of  those,  who,  as  we  shall  find,  were 
his  nearest  associates.  He  saw  the  straits  of  these  exiled 
lovers  of  good  learning.  Everything  was  then  to  be  done 
with  scant  means  for  doing  it.  We  can  realize  the  extreme 
destitution  of  the  college  then  ;  for  all  its  presidents,  includ- 
ing its  now  honored  yet  still  supplicant  head,  assure  us  that  its 
destitution  has  never  been  surmounted.  The  young  scholar 
and  minister  —  hardly  could  he  have  been  of  thirty  years  of 
age  —  felt  upon  him  the  touch  of  mortal  disease.  He  thought 
of  the  property,  considerable  for  those  days,  which  he  had 
left  in  England.  By  a  nuncupative  will  preceding  his  death 
(Sept.  24,  1638,  N.S.)  he  bequeathed  the  half  of  his  estate  to 
the  college.  No  probate  or  administration  on  his  will  appears 
as  having  been  made  here.  The  college  records  appear  to  rec- 
ognize the  receipt  of  only  half  the  amount  of  his  bequest. 
The  brooding  troubles  of  the  civil  war  in  England  may  have 
hindered  or  impaired  its  transmission.  We  know  him  to  have 
been  beloved  and  honored,  a  well  trained  and  accomplished 
scholar  of  the  type  then  esteemed.  There  is  a  tender  rever- 
ence in  every  early  mention  of  him.  It  may  be  said  of  him, 
in  the  words  of  Cotton  Mather  of  another,  that  "he  left  his 
old  English  home,  and  took  New  England  on  his  way  to 
heaven." 

His  whole  library  went  with  his  bequest  to  the  college. 
The  list  is  on  the  college  records  of  302  volumes.  They 
certify  to  his  scholarly  qualities,  —  classical,  philosophical,  and 
theological, — and  to  his  earnest  Puritanism.  This  solid  vol- 
ume which  I  hold  in  my  hand  is  the  only  one  —  then  in 
some  private  use  —  that  escaped  the  conflagration  on  Jan.  24, 
1764,  which  destroyed  the  college  library  edifice  and  all  its 
contents,  when  the  General  Court  occupied  it,  driven  from 
Boston  by  the  small-pox.  This  disaster  caused  an  irreparable 
loss  to  the  college.     Harvard  Hall  was  then  the  last  remain- 


IO 

ing  of  the  old  or  earlier  buildings.  It  was  erected  in  1672. 
The  night  was  one  of  a  cold  winter's  tempest  of  wind  and 
snow.  It  being  vacation,  the  students  absent,  only  three  per- 
sons were  lodged  in  the  buildings,  all  of  which — Massachu- 
setts, (the  former)  Stoughton,  and  Hollis  Halls,  the  latter  just 
completed,  and  Holden  Chapel  —  were  in  danger,  and  actu- 
ally kindled.  The  edifice  contained  all  the  relics  and  treas- 
ured gatherings  of  the  college  for  more  than  sixscore  years 
after  its  foundation.  Besides  the  library  of  Harvard,  the 
whole  libraries  of  Drs.  Lightfoot  and  Theophilus  Gale,  — 
bequeathed  or  given  to  the  college,  rich  in  Hebrew,  patristic, 
and  classic  lore,  —  donations  of  learned  societies  and  corpora- 
tions, gifts  of  many  generous  private  benefactors  abroad  and 
at  home,  medical  preparations,  and  a  font  of  Greek  type,  etc., 
perished  in  the  conflagration.  There  were  about  five  thou- 
sand volumes.  Valuable  philosophical  apparatus,  of  the  high- 
est quality  of  the  time,  and  rich  in  variety,  portraits  of  eminent 
men  and  benefactors,  college  records,  and  much  miscellaneous 
matter,  were  included  in  the  ruin. 

By  this  volume  alone  we  stretch  a  hand  across  the  cen- 
turies, and  hold  a  single  relic  of  Harvard. 

The  founder  of  this  college  was  an  English  Puritan  min- 
ister. That  fact  is  a  fragment  of  an  historical  truth  of  large 
import.  The  distinctive  character  and  qualities  of  the  New 
England  Colonies  —  impressed  and  effective  from  the  earliest 
days,  entailed  and  expanding  and  radiating  over  our  whole 
country  to  this  day  of  its  extent  and  grandeur  —  are  to  be 
referred  to  that  truth,  which  may  be  thus  simply  stated.  A 
hundred  scholars  from  Cambridge  and  Oxford  Universities 
were  concerned  in  the  first  planting  of  our  wilderness  settle- 
ments, with  their  churches,  schools,  colleges,  and  printing- 
presses,  during  a  period  in  which  there  was  to  be  found 
scarcely  a  single  college-bred  man  in  all  the  other  English 
Colonies  here.  More  than  thirty  years  after  the  first  class 
were  pursuing  their  studies  in  this  college,  Sir  William  Berke- 


II 

ley,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  wrote  to  the  commissioners  of 
foreign  plantations  in  London  :  "  I  thank  God  there  are  no 
free  schools,  nor  printing,  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have  these 
hundred  years  ;  for  learning  has  brought  disobedience  into 
the  world,  and  printing  has  divulged  them  and  libels  against 
the  best  governments.  God  keep  us  from  both  !  "  This  was 
seven  years  after  the  Bible,  translated  into  the  language  of 
the  natives,  had  been  printed  and  published  here.  These 
statements  sum  up  the  whole  explanation  of  the  pre-eminence 
of  New  England  in  thrift,  learning,  science,  and  influence. 
Seventy  of  the  hundred  of  those  exiled  scholars  were  from 
Cambridge,  then  a  special  Puritan  stronghold.  A  score  of 
them,  contemporaries  and  associates  of  John  Harvard,  were 
from  Emmanuel,  Puritan  even  from  its  foundation,  furnishing 
our  own  college  with  its  first  two  presidents.  Harvard,  during 
some  of  his  terms,  might  have  shared  the  intimacy  of  John 
,  Milton.  These  exiled  scholars  were  the  peers  of  those  they 
left  behind  in  erudition,  in  strength  and  graces  of  character. 
They  brought  with  them  their  books,  and  the  talent  to  make 
more  books.  They  changed  their  atmosphere  and  surround- 
ings, but  not  their  spirits  nor  their  minds.  They  had  had 
the  sharp  discipline  of  angry  ecclesiastical  and  polemical  con- 
troversy, with  the  arguments  of  infliction,  fines,  and  prisons 
on  the  side  against  them.  Their  mastering  aim  was,  that  in 
the  transition  process  then  in  progress,  of  the  reformation, 
restoration,  and  reconstruction  of  their  beloved  English 
Church,  all  that  had  been  incorporated  into  its  doctrine, 
discipline,  ceremonial,  and  ritual,  from  repudiated  Rome, 
should,  in  root  and  branch,  be  renounced,  for  the  return 
to  the  simple,  scriptural,  apostolic  model.  They  found  no 
warrant  or  use  for  "lords  bishops."  Nor  was  a  single  one 
such  dignitary  allowed  in  the  country  during  the  more  than 
a  century  and  a  half  before  the  Colonies  won  their  independ- 
ence ;  and  those  baronial  prelates  have  since  found  no  place 
here.     They  attended  their  flocks  into  the  wildernesses  of 


12 

hill  and  valley,  and  held  over  them  a  godly  discipline,  guard- 
ing purity  in  their  households,  and  industry  in  the  fields,  and 
preaching  strong  doctrine  in  their  pulpits.  They  sought  out 
the  most  promising  young  men  in  their  parishes,  guided  their 
studies,  and  sent  them  here  for  the  best  education  the  time 
would  furnish.  They  brought  with  them  the  aches  and  scars 
and  bruises  of  their  conflict.  They  were  intolerant  —  as  all 
men  the  world  over,  in  all  time,  have  ever  been  and  always 
will  be,  when  they  are  in  solemn  earnest  —  for  truth  or  error. 
Austere,  rigid,  narrow,  in  many  things  unlovely,  they  really 
were  ;  and  this  was  simply  because  they  put  themselves  under 
the  same  severities  which  they  imposed  on  others.  The 
very  noblest  thing  about  them  was  that  teasing  restlessness 
of  spirit,  that  quickening  energy  of  progressive  thinking, 
which  compelled  them  to  outgrow  their  own  limitations  ;  so 
that  they  have  relieved  us  from  having  such  as  our  contempo- 
raries, and  stand  to  us  only  as  most  worthy  ancestors.  They 
have  left  us  the  most  enviable  heritage  on  the  earth. 

To  provide  a  succession  of  ministers  for  the  multiplying 
churches  was  the  chief  intent  of  this  college.  Ministers  were 
the  chief  necessity  of  our  early  years.  They  may  be  as  much 
needed  now  as  then  ;  but  they  do  not  appear  to  be  so  much 
wanted.  A  curious  epoch  of  transition  was  soon  marked 
here,  of  the  need  of  college-bred  men  for  other  ranges  of 
service.  We  find  a  series  of  graduates,  who  in  their  studies 
had  the  ministry  in  view,  and  who  entered  upon  the  prepa- 
ration for,  or  even  the  trial  of,  the  work,  but  turned  aside  to 
high  places  of  magistracy.  Of  such  were  Governors  Joseph 
Dudley,  William  Stoughton,  Gurdon  Saltonstall,  and  Chief 
Justice  Sewall,  all  contemporaries.  But  the  type  of  New 
England  Puritan  ministers  did  not  continue  to  satisfy  all  con- 
sciences. A  few  English  Churchmen,  clerical  and  lay,  there 
were,  who  believed  that  the  ministry  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion did  not  depend  alone  upon  the  truth  and  power  of  its 
doctrine,  but  to  be  valid  required  also  a  certain  official  virtue 


13 

communicated  in  the  succession  of  those  who  held,  and  who 
only  could  impart  it.  So,  just  a  century  ago,  our  independ- 
ence having  been  established,  qualified  men  were  sent  to 
England  and  Scotland  to  secure  the  desired  gift.  The  gospel 
itself  was  never  heralded  with  warmer  joy  in  the  darkest  of 
Pagan  regions  than  marked,  for  some  among  us,  the  return 
from  Scotland,  after  his  consecration,  of  that  excellent  and 
devoted  man  who  signed  himself  "  Samuel,  Bishop  of  Con- 
necticut," which  he  was  not.  Of  course,  this  movement 
caused  pain  and  ill-feeling  to  those  trained  in  the  New  Eng- 
land churches,  upon  whose  Christian  standing  it  cast  a  slight. 
However,  it  brought  under  the  light  the  shining  fact  that  in 
no  quarter,  and  in  no  age  of  Christendom,  had  more  pious 
and  devoted  labors  been  spent  by  holy  and  faithful  men  for 
the  Christian  religion,  than  those  which  had  been  conse- 
crated here  in  patient  toil,  in  lifelong  zeal  and  love,  for  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years.  What  would  New  England  have 
been  without  them  ?  What  has  it  been  with  them  and 
through  them  ?  Let  the  chief  grace  of  the  gospel,  charity, 
estimate  their  purpose  and  work,  and  cover  their  error,  if 
they  were  unwittingly  intruders  and  interlopers  on  a  field 
forbidden  to  them. 

It  would  be  a  most  grateful  theme  for  an  able  pen  to  set 
forth  the  services  of  Harvard's  ministers  in  their  frugal  coun- 
try parsonages.  Their  own  sons  alone,  after  a  training  here, 
furnish  a  signal  and  shining  list  of  the  wise  and  good,  the 
honored  and  generous  men  in  this  community  who  came  from 
those  rural  ministerial  homes.  Of  such  were  Chief  Justice 
Shaw  and  Dr.  Jacob  Bigelow,  the  illustrious  heads  of  their 
respective  professions.  And  what  a  constellation  of  the 
scions,  sons  and  grandsons,  of  our  ministerial  stock,  have  we 
in  the  men  of  letters,  who  have  produced  such  a  considerable 
portion  of  our  national  literature,  —  Bancroft  and  Everett, 
Emerson  and  Hedge,  Motley  and  Parkman,  Holmes  and 
Lowell ! 


The  books  in  Harvard's  library  warrant  the  belief  that  he 
would  have  welcomed  the  largest  expanding  of  the  field  of 
good  learning  and  fine  culture.  There  is  a  discernible  differ- 
ence between  the  tone  and  spirit  of  the  first-comers  here,  and 
those  of  their  children  of  the  first  and  second  generations,  born 
in  the  wilderness,  who  had  no  milk  when  they  were  babes,  and 
no  memory  of  the  ivy  growths,  the  sports  and  fond  associations, 
of  Old  England.  Those  first-comers  here  brought  with  them 
fond  remembrances.  So  the  young  Harvard  was  not  alone, 
companionless,  friendless,  when  he  came  here.  It  may  have 
been  that  more  of  those  with  whom  he  had  heart-intimacies 
were  then  on  this  side  of  the  ocean  than  on  the  other.  It  was 
but  the  renewal  for  him  of  his  college  friendships,  cemented 
by  a  deep,  strong  affinity  of  spirit.  John  Cotton  of  Boston, 
and  Thomas  Hooker  of  Cambridge,  the  first  ministers  of  those 
towns,  had  been  fellows  and  teachers  at  Emmanuel.  Symmes, 
the  minister  of  Charlestown,  whom  Harvard  aided  as  his 
strength  permitted,  and  who  may  have  witnessed  the  closing 
of  his  young  and  pure  life,  was  of  the  same  college.  Many, 
many  others,  also,  held  him  in  their  hearts.  Would  that  they 
had  told  us  more  of  him  through  their  pens ! 

Reverence,  love,  gratitude,  and  honor  have  combined  to 
enlist  genius  in  their  service,  that  there  may  be  a  personal 
memorial  of  Harvard  on  these  grounds,  which  his  living  feet, 
doubtless,  often  trod.  There  is  not  known  to  be  extant  a  por- 
trait or  any  delineation  or  description  of  his  personality,  his 
form  or  features.  Is  not  the  prompting,  however,  fair  and 
allowable,  that  there  should  be  some  artistic  memorial  of  him 
on  these  grounds  ? 

Let  it  be  distinctly  and  frankly  avowed,  for  record  on  this 
precise  day  of  the  unveiling  of  a  statue  as  a  simulacrum  of 
John  Harvard,  —  so  that  only  wilful  error,  or  a  fond,  mythical 
invention  can  ever  mislead  or  falsify  a  generous  and  grateful 
prompting,  —  that  this  exquisite  moulding  in  bronze  serves  a 
purpose  for  the  eye,  the  thought,  and  sentiment,  through  the 


15 

ideal,  in  lack  of  the  real.  We  have  enlisted  one  of  the  noblest 
of  the  arts  to  embody  a  conception  of  what  Harvard  might 
have  been  in  body  and  lineament,  from  what  we  know  that  he 
was  in  mind  and  in  soul.  It  is  by  no  means  without  allowed 
and  approved  precedent,  that,  in  the  lack  of  authentic  por- 
traitures of  such  as  are  to  be  commemorated,  an  ideal  repre- 
sentation supplies  the  vacancy  of  a  reality.  It  is  one  of  the 
fair  issues  between  poetry  and  prose.  The  wise,  the  honored, 
the  fair,  the  noble,  and  the  saintly,  are  never  grudged  some 
finer  touches  of  the  artist  in  tint  or  feature,  which  etherealize 
their  beauty,  or  magnify  their  elevation,  as  expressed  in  the 
actual  body,  —  the  eye,  the  brow,  the  lip,  the  moulding  of  the 
mortal  clay.  To  flatter  is  not  always  to  falsify.  The  Latin 
simiilacnim  and  the  Greek  EiScdXov  alike  divide  their  signifi- 
cance between  a  faithful  presentation  of  a  real  or  a  conceived 
likeness,  and  the  creation  of  an  unsubstantial  form.  It  is  but 
a  following  of  the  principle  of  adjustment  in  equity,  in  the 
redirection  of  antiquated  trusts,  by  approximating  to  the  truth 
and  the  right.  To  say  nothing  of  the  classic  paintings  and 
sculptures  of  deities,  muses,  and  graces,  that  never  had  a  fleshly 
embodiment,  nor  even  of  the  mediaeval  saints  and  worthies, 
the  halls  and  galleries  of  continental  Europe,  and  the  corri- 
dors of  St.  Stephen's,  Westminster,  have  freely  exercised  the 
imagination  of  artists  who  had  no  certified  originals  to  follow. 
Were  all  the  busts  of  philosophers,  poets,  and  Caesars,  in  the 
museums  of  Rome,  Florence,  and  Naples,  portraitures  from 
life  ?  And  even  when  veritable  representations  of  the  great 
and  honored  dead  have  been  in  the  hands  of  the  artists,  aided 
by  living  memories,  we  need  not  go  beyond  the  neighboring 
city  to  be  satisfied  that  art  may  fail  in  skill  and  truth  in 
dealing  with  contemporaries  as  with  the  long-vanished  dead. 
The  late  Wendell  Phillips  did  his  best  to  warn  posterity 
against  being  beguiled  by  our  Boston  statues.  If  the  two 
foremost  worthies  of  our  earliest  age  could  come  forth  to  con- 
template their  own  statues,  would  not  the  honored  Governor 


i6 

Winthrop  be  more  likely  to  refuse  to  enshrine  himself  in  that 
mass  of  metal  in  Scollay  Square,  though  his  own  living  por- 
trait was  put  to  service  in  it,  than  would  our  reverend  founder 
to  express  himself  in  this  fair  counterfeit  of  him  ? 

And  if  the  contingency  which  has  been  imagined  should 
present  itself,  of  the  coming  to  the  light  of  some  authentic 
portraiture  of  John  Harvard,  the  pledge  may  here  and  now  be 
ventured,  that  some  generous  friend,  such  as,  to  the  end  of 
time,  shall  never  fail  our  Alma  Mater,  notwithstanding  her 
chronic  poverty,  will  provide  that  this  bronze  shall  be  liquefied 
again,  and  made  to  tell  the  whole  known  truth  so  as  by  fire. 

Let  us  remember  that  the  ideal  can  never  transcend  the 
real,  though  many  light  sayings  assert  the  contrary.  The 
gifted  artist  has  wrought  for  us  here  an  engaging  and  a  beau- 
tiful object.  Alone,  in  his  workroom  through  the  dull  days 
of  a  whole  winter,  he  was  moulding  the  moistened  clay  in 
patient  study,  imitating  the  creative  work  by  which  man  was 
fashioned  out  of  the  dust  of  the  ground.  And,  so  far  as 
man's  highest  gifts  can  complete  the  process,  he  has  breathed 
into  it  a  living  soul.  It  holds  the  eye  and  thought  gazing 
upon  it  in  form,  lineament,  and  feature.  It  shows  us  a  young 
scholar  in  the  academic  costume  and  garb  of  his  time,  with  the 
refinement  and  gravity  of  pure  high-thinking.  Gently  touched 
by  the  weakness  which  was  wasting  his  immature  life,  he 
rests  for  a  moment  from  his  converse  with  wisdom  on  the 
printed  page,  and  raises  his  contemplative  eye  to  the  spaces 
of  all  wisdom.  The  seal  of  his  English  college  is  on  the  left 
of  the  pedestal,  and  that  which  was  so  felicitously  seized  upon 
for  the  college  to  which  he  transferred  learning  from  the  Old 
World  to  the  New,  is  on  the  right.  Let  this  memorial  be 
richly  garlanded  with  summer  flowers  on  your  high  class 
days !  Let  the  pensive  beauty  of  that  sweet  countenance 
be  cheer  and  inspiration  to  the  student  passing  by  it,  under 
fair,  or  clouded,  or  stormy  skies,  or  by  the  illumination  of  the 
moon ! 


*7 

Would  that  those  eyes  had  vision  for  the  spirit,  that  they 
might  look  forth  upon  these  clustering  halls,  the  oldest  and 
the  newest,  which  keep  the  record  and  method  of  enlargement 
from  the  old  plain  solidity  to  the  fresh  ornateness  of  this 
year's  taste !  Would  that  they  could  behold  the  results  of  the 
transforming  process  on  the  domains  of  the  Indian,  the  wolf, 
and  the  bear,  to  these  crowded  groups  of  young  men  in  the 
vigor  and  promise  of  a  most  privileged  life  ! 

These  are  all  before  us.  The  graduates  of  Harvard  now 
make  the  most  numerous  body  of  any  one  continued  fel- 
lowship on  this  continent.  And  here  is  the  centre  of  our 
common  debt  and  love. 

"  O  Relic  and  Type  of  our  ancestors'  worth, 
That  hast  long  kept  their  memory  warm, 
First  Flower  of  their  wilderness,  Star  of  their  night, 
Calm  rising  through  change  and  through  storm." 


Singing  by  the  Glee  Club  followed,  when  President 
Eliot  arose,  and  accepted  the  gift  in  these  words  :  — 

"  It  is  my  pleasant  duty  to  declare  that  the  University 
gratefully  accepts  the  interesting  and  inspiring  memorial  of 
John  Harvard  which  generosity  and  genius  have  conspired 
to  produce.  The  University  counts  of  inestimable  worth  the 
lessons  which  this  pure,  gentle,  resolute  youth  will  teach,  as 
he  sits  in  bronze  looking  wistfully  into  the  western  sky.  He 
will  teach  that  one  disinterested  deed  of  hope  and  faith  may 
crown  a  brief  and  broken  life  with  deathless  fame.  He  will 
teach  that  the  good  which  men  do  lives  after  them,  fructified 
and  multiplied  beyond  all  power  of  measurement  or  compu- 
tation. He  will  teach  that  from  the  seed  which  he  planted 
in  loneliness,  weakness,  and  sorrow,  have  sprung  joy,  strength, 
and  energy  ever  fresh,  blooming  year  after  year  in  this  gar- 


den  of  learning,  and  flourishing  more  and  more,  as  time  goes 
on,  in  all  fields  of  human  activity.  Let  us  go  and  look  upon 
this  silent  but  impressive  teacher." 

As  the  President  spoke  his  closing  words,  he  led 
the  way,  accompanied  by  Mr.  Bridge,  and  .followed 
by  the  entire  audience,  but  without  formal  order,  to 
the  area  which  had  been  reserved  about  the  statue. 
As  soon  as  the  crowd  had  encircled  it  at  a  distance 
which  enabled  all  to  see,  the  signal  was  given,  and  the 
cloth  which  covered  the  statue  was  dropped. 

The  undergraduates  were  massed  on  one  side,  and, 
in  response  to  the  call  of  their  leader,  they  greeted 
the  unveiling  with  nine  of  their  college  cheers.  They 
paid  the  same  tribute  to  the  giver  and  to  the  sculptor, 
and  the  ceremonies  were  over. 

On   the   base   of  the   statue   is   the  name   of   the 

company   by   whom    the    casting   was  done,  —  The 

Henry- Bonnard  Bronze  Company,  New  York, 
1884. 

On  the  front  of  the  pedestal,  which  is  of  fine-ham- 
mered granite,  is  inscribed  in  gilt  letters,  — 


JOHN     HARVARD 

FOUNDER 
1638 


19 


The  seal,  in  bronze,  of  Emmanuel  College,1  Cam- 
bridge,  England,  is  let  into  the  stone  on  the  southern 
face.  Corresponding  on  the  northern  face  is  the  seal 
of  Harvard  College.    On  the  rear  face  are  the  words,  — 


GIVEN    BY 

SAMUEL   JAMES    BRIDGE 

J^JNE    17,    1883 


1  The  three  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  foundation  of  Emmanuel 
College  was  commemorated  with  appropriate  observances  at  Cambridge, 
England,  on  the  18th  and  19th  of  June,  the  present  year.  Abundant 
honor  was  then  done  to  its  alumnus,  John  Harvard,  as  the  founder  of 
Harvard  University.  An  invitation  had  been  sent  by  the  authorities  of 
Emmanuel,  that  Harvard  College  should  be  represented  on  the  auspicious 
occasion.  In  answer  to  the  request,  Professor  Charles  Eliot  Norton  was 
delegated  as  such  representative.  He  attended,  and  took  a  prominent 
part  in  the  exercises  of  the  commemoration,  at  which  the  common  inter- 
ests and  mutual  regard  of  the  Universities  at  the  two  Cambridges  were 
amply  recognized  and  confirmed. 

The  Chapel  of  Emmanuel,  where  the  religious  services  of  the  Ter- 
centenary were  held,  has  been  recently  repaired  and  adorned.  The  eight 
windows  —  four  on  either  side  —  are  filled  with  the  portraits  of  theolo- 
gians, two  in  each,  beginning  with  Augustine  and  Anselm,  and  ending 
with  Sancroft  and  Law.  The  third  and  fourth  windows  on  both  sides  are 
occupied  with  portraits  of  Emmanuel  men.  In  the  third  window  of  the 
north  side  is  John  Harvard, —of  course  an  ideal  representation,  —  with 
Laurence  Chaderton,  first  Master  of  Emmanuel,  as  his  companion. 
Harvard  holds  a  scroll  bearing  the  words,  Populus  qui  crtabitur  laudabit 
Dominum . 


